Russian forces have given up on encircling or seizing Kyiv, and may put effort into securing the whole of Donbas as 150,000 civilians remain besieged in Mariupol. Bombardment and disinformation continues, regardless.
The long run prospects will make Ukraine even more militarized despite “finlandization” implied by a promise not to join NATO. Talks continue with the usual demands and conflicts as 3.8 million Ukrainians have been displaced.
Russian forces are engaged in four primary efforts at this time:
- Main effort—Kyiv (comprised of three subordinate supporting efforts);
- Supporting effort 1—Kharkiv;
- Supporting effort 1a—Luhansk and Donetsk Oblasts;
- Supporting effort 2—Mariupol; and
- Supporting effort 3—Kherson and advances northward and westward.
Main effort—Kyiv axis: Russian operations on the Kyiv axis were aimed at encircling the city from the northwest, west, and east. It is unclear if forces on this axis have been given a new mission and, if so, what it might be.
Key Takeaways
- We now assess that Russian forces have given up on encircling or seizing Kyiv at this time. Russian forces continue to fight to hold their current front-line trace near the city, however, remaining dug into positions to the east, northwest, and west. Russian forces withdrawing from the area around Kyiv appear to be moving north from behind the front line to positions in Belarus.
- Russia is directing some reserves to the effort to connect gains southeast of Kharkiv and Izyum with its front line in Luhansk.
- Ukrainian forces continue to defend in likely isolated pockets in Mariupol. The city will likely fall to the Russians within days.
- A Russian offensive operation to take the rest of unoccupied Donetsk Oblast would be a significant undertaking. It remains unclear if Russia can harvest enough combat power from Mariupol after securing the city or divert reinforcements from elsewhere on a large enough scale to complete it.
www.understandingwar.org/...
Russia has fired “multiple” hypersonic missiles at military targets in Ukraine, the top U.S. commander in Europe said on Tuesday, bringing some clarity to conflicting reports and claims.
On March 19, the Russian ministry of defense claimed that it had launched a Kinzhal, or Dagger, missile to strike a Ukrainian ammunition dump about 100 kilometers from the Romanian border.
The launch, most likely from a MiG-31 warplane, was the first reported combat use of one of the new classes of high-speed, highly maneuverable missiles commonly referred to as hypersonics. But the ministry’s purported video footage of the launch didn’t even show the correct date, leading to confusion about what had actually happened.
Ten days later, U.S. Air Force Gen. Tod Wolters told lawmakers that the Russian military has, in fact, launched hypersonic weapons into Ukraine.
www.defenseone.com/...
Ukrainian officials say they are hoping at most for a cease-fire agreement as they enter a new round of in-person negotiations with Russia set to begin in Istanbul on Tuesday.
Ukraine’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Dmytro Kuleba said his country will focus most immediately on “humanitarian” issues and seek a halt to the fighting, according to Ukrainian media. He said Ukraine will not trade “people, land or sovereignty,” though Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has recently signaled openness to negotiations over long-disputed territory in the east and a potential renunciation of his country’s aspirations to join NATO.
Western authorities and military experts say Russian forces were unprepared for Ukraine’s fierce resistance, which has raised pressure for a diplomatic solution to a war that could drag on in stalemate. But Kremlin officials dampened hopes of a breakthrough Monday, accusing Ukraine of only pretending to negotiate.
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The Pentagon announced that it is deploying about 240 troops and six Navy electronic warfare aircraft to Germany in an effort to reinforce NATO powers in Eastern Europe.
“They are not being deployed to be used against Russian forces in Ukraine,” said Pentagon press secretary John Kirby. “They are being deployed completely in keeping with our efforts to bolster NATO’s deterrence and defense capabilities.”
The move nevertheless will probably anger Russia, which has cited NATO’s expansion in Europe as a pressure point in its decision to invade Ukraine. Kirby said the planes would not be used to jam Russian communications but would help bolster security in Eastern Europe.
www.washingtonpost.com/…
Russia has made many errors. But Ukraine has played an inferior hand well. It is a country that is smaller in size, population, economy, and military forces than its invader. Why has it, so far, been successful at defending itself against the military forces of a nuclear-armed superpower?
In short, Ukrainian strategic thinking has out-thought the Russian President and his advisors. What are the key elements of the Ukrainian strategy that have allowed this to happen? To understand the approach, we must first understand what political outcomes the Zelensky administration seeks from a war that was forced upon them.
Zelensky has described Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity as “beyond doubt” and his goal is “peace and restoration of normal life”. In a recent interview with The Economist, Zelensky also noted that “as for compromises that may risk the disintegration of the country, the ones which Putin proposes, or rather demands in the form of an ultimatum, we will never make them. Never.”
The first is the sustainment of a national approach to the war. Ukraine has treated the Russian invasion as an existential threat. It has mobilised all of its military, industrial, economic, information and diplomatic resources to defend itself.
The second element is the construction and ongoing development of international support. This has taken the form of diplomacy, multinational forums and a masterful global influence campaign that built support for Ukraine in many (but not all) nations around the world. It has been ably supported by hacktivists targeting Russian cyber and information warfare capabilities. International influence has also been reinforced through President Zelensky’s livestreamed addresses to multiple national parliaments, NATO forums and the US Congress. Surely, no national leader in history has been provided such a global platform in so many national legislatures to seek military and humanitarian aid for his nation.
A third element of Ukrainian strategy is to protect its people. This is the responsibility of all legitimate governments, but wars make this a very difficult proposition. Despite the challenges of Russia’s deliberate targeting of cities and their inhabitants, the Ukrainian government has sought to maintain basic services such as hospitals, firefighters and other foundations of safe societies. After all, without people, what is a nation? ...
The final element of Ukrainian strategy is keeping a capable military in the field. The Ukrainians must continue to contest Russian military thrusts, on the ground, in the air and in cyberspace. President Zelensky may be a former actor and comedian, but he deeply appreciates the need to maintain his military forces as they fight off the Russians. And he understands that he needs Western military assistance to keep them fighting.
www.smh.com.au/...
“There is a whole next stage to the Putin playbook, which is well known to the Chechens,” The Times’s Carlotta Gall writes. “As Russian troops gained control on the ground in Chechnya, they crushed any further dissent with arrests and filtration camps and by turning and empowering local protégés and collaborators.”
Suppose for a moment that Putin never intended to conquer all of Ukraine: that, from the beginning, his real targets were the energy riches of Ukraine’s east, which contain Europe’s second-largest known reserves of natural gas (after Norway’s).
Combine that with Russia’s previous territorial seizures in Crimea (which has huge offshore energy fields) and the eastern provinces of Luhansk and Donetsk (which contain part of an enormous shale-gas field), as well as Putin’s bid to control most or all of Ukraine’s coastline, and the shape of Putin’s ambitions become clear. He’s less interested in reuniting the Russian-speaking world than he is in securing Russia’s energy dominance.
“Under the guise of an invasion, Putin is executing an enormous heist,” said Canadian energy expert David Knight Legg. As for what’s left of a mostly landlocked Ukraine, it will likely become a welfare case for the West, which will help pick up the tab for resettling Ukraine’s refugees to new homes outside of Russian control. In time, a Viktor Orban-like figure could take Ukraine’s presidency, imitating the strongman-style of politics that Putin prefers in his neighbors.
If this analysis is right, then Putin doesn’t seem like the miscalculating loser his critics make him out to be.
www.nytimes.com/...